Design and Technical Specifications of Seer Fish Gillnets of Ratnagiri, Maharashtra

Abstract

Gillnet is commonly used by the fishermen of Ratnagiri for the capture of seer fish. The present study deals with design, technical specifications and operation of seer fish gillnets (towerchi rapan) operated off Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. The nets were made of webbings of polyamide multifilament of 210d×2×3 to 210d×12×3 having mesh sizes ranging from 70 to 150 mm. Each fleet of net comprised of webbings of different mesh sizes in combination to capture different size groups of fishes, which is not a good practice. The nets were without foot ropes and were operated as surface drift during September to December and column drift during October to May. The seer fish gillnet fishing sector of Ratnagiri comes under the category of ‘small scale drift net fisheries’ as fleet length of majority of the units was below 2500 m.